Low

12-23-41

Transport.

THE document that stands at the head of this article and which was anticipated by the agricultural community, and the nation at large, with the intense interest which an enquiry so long deferred, and imperatively called for, deserved--has now been before the public for a sufficient length of time to have admitted of a mature, and it may be supposed tolerably accurate, estimate of its merits. Therefore, in reviewing the Report, we shall take advantage of the numerous criticisms upon it which have appeared during the interval that has elapsed since its publication, to relieve ourselves of the responsibility of sitting in judgment upon it. Upon a subject of such vital importance individual opinion is but of slight regard when laid in the balance against the finding of a number. We shall avoid exposing ourselves to this objection, and meet the collective wisdom of the Committee by the collective wisdom of the Press. Though we shall work up the material so copiously furnished after our own fashion we desire to have it understood that the spirit of the latter is compressed into the following preliminary observations. The extracts that

will succeed them from the corpus delicti, viz, the Report itself, will be followed by some remarks of our own.

The Report then of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to enquire into the present State of Agriculture in the United Kingdom, together with the evidence educed, forms a volume of 707 folio pages:-an ample proof of itself, were all others wanting, of the industry of the thirty-six Honourable Members entrusted with this most momentous investigation. Yet, notwithstanding its bulk, to all who have paid attention to the retrograde condition of the country during the last fourteen years, the Report presents little that was not previously understood. If, however, the undigested compilation of the numerous facts which have been brought together has thrown no new lights upon the subject, it has at least gathered them from afar into one immense conglomeration. The Swing-fires, if we may so speak, throughout all the land, those signals of distress which were confined to local observation, have been amassed into a mighty funeral pile--the baleful glare of which is now alike visible as portentous to

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every eye in the three kingdoms. No man can rise from the perusal of the Report without coming to the fixed conclusion, that the agricultural interest is rapidly sinking into ruin; and he must be obtuse indeed who does not see that with this fundamental interest all other interests in the country must fall. The faithful interpretation, upon this particular topic, of the Committee's softened Report is, that, beyond all question, agricultural distress generally prevails; that farming capital has rapidly decreased within these few years; and that the effects of that decrease are apparent in a diminution of the stock of cattle and sheep-in the abridged and deteriorated cultivation of the soil-and in deficient unremunerative crops. In a word, the real sufferings of this oppressed class of the community are not exaggerated when we say, "that our tenantry are utterly destroyed fathers sent broken-hearted to the grave widows to the workhouse-sons to despair-daughters to ruin-all once the virtuous contented inmates of peaceful and happy homes!"

But if the Report has had its use in making apparent the distress of the agriculturists-it seems to have effected no other beneficial end. "Seldom," says a leading authority, "have we seen so bulky a volume-the work of a public body containing so little matter really worthy of attention. We have had the courage to dive pretty deep into the immense mass of evidence, in the hope of being able to bring to the surface something calculated to gratify the curiosity, to extend the knowledge, or to correct the prejudices of the public, but we candidly own that we have met with little, or no success. Even the Report itself, though it might have been expected to embody the essence of the depositions taken by the Committee, and to have pointed out improvements conformable to the new information obtained in the progress of the enquiry, possesses scarcely any claims to public confidence or gratitude." Indeed it does not seem to have

given satisfaction to any of the parties who have commented upon it. To use the strong language of another journalist, "it has, in fact, that gloomy and unsatisfactory character which necessarily belongs to a document, which, after pointing out many evils, suggests no remedy that is not to be found in time and patience."

Time and patience! There are cases in which such remedies are worse than the disease; others where, admitting their utility, it becomes a matter of impossibility to administer them. Let us dip into the Report, and see from the symptoms under which the agriculturists labour whether as regards them they will prove either availing or applicable.

"In looking back," says the Report, "to the one made by the Committee, in 1821, to whom the petitions complaining of the depressed State of the Agriculture of the United Kingdom were referred, it will be found that the Report commences by stating, "that the complaints of the petttioners are founded in fact in so far as they represent that, at the present price of corn, the returns to the occupier of an arable farm, after allowing for the interest of his investment, are by no means adequate to the charges and outgoings, of which a considerable proportion can be paid only out of the capitals, and not from the profits of the tenantry."

Such was the conclusion arrived at by the Committee of 1821, but not without expressing "the hope, that the great body of the occupiers of the soil, either from the savings of more prosperous times, or from the credit which punctuality commands in this country, command resources which will enable them to surmount the diffieulties under which they now labour." The hope seemed but fair and reasonable: -what then has been the result?

After the lapse of twelve years, during which we have enjoyed fruitful seasonsfreedom from external aggression, and domestic repose--here is the finding from the facts produced, "Your Committee, with

deep regret, are bound rather to express a fear that the difficulties alone remain unchanged, the credit falling, and the resources being generally exhausted; and this opinion is formed, not on the evidence of rent-payers, but of many most respectable witnesses, as well as the owners of land as surveyors and land agents."

Such are the circumstances under which the Committee-not without subscribing their formal assent to the correctness of the position, "that the agriculture of the kingdom is the first of all concerns, the foundation of all its prosperity in every other matter by which that prosperity is produced," terminate their labours by

avowing it to be their opinion, that the hopes of melioration in the condition of the landed interest rest rather on the cautious forbearance than on the active interposition of Parliament.”

A more lame and impotent conclusion, under the extreme exigencies of affaiis, never emanated from a body of men entrusted with a solemn and responsible investigation. Is it at a moment when it is allowed on the one hand, "that the supply of agricultural labour is greater than the demand;" and the apprehension is not concealed upon the other, that "the quantity of land in cultivation has been greatly diminished; and that what is still retained in use is much less perfectly cultivated than heretofore;" that government is to be counselled "cautiously to forbear" preventing our overburdened husbandry from plodding on in the same sad circle of distress to perpetuity? Again, when it is acknowledged, that "farmers have been long paying their rent out of their capital" --that the agricultural capital of the country is upon the point of being exhausted, and the productiveness of the land consequently dried up-that the amount of food has been diminishing in an alarming ratio-and the mouths that ought to consume it have been becoming more numerous by millions-that the misery of the lower orders is daily multiplying, and

idleness and discontent everywhere prevalent is it less than a mere mocking at our agricultural calamity to say, that "the active interposition of Parliament" is not urgently, nay imperatively, called for?

We suppose the timorous and feeble conclusion arrived at by the Committee, (by which, indeed, nothing is concluded,) was made with the intention of quietly shutting the door upon the Corn-law question, as if the barring out of the enemy from abroad, was sufficient to make all within prosperous and satisfied! Why did the Committee not boldly avow that the removal of the corn-laws, however clamoured for by a party in the state, however countenanced by the anguish and distress of a hungry inultitude, would be accompanied, to the nation at large, by evils inevitably more destructive and overwhelming than even those which now grind and oppress us. Is there any thing to be ashamed of in declaring a truth so obvious and incontrovertable? It seems to be taken for a matter of course that the welfare of the agricultural body is a thing of no importance to any other class or portion of the community but themselves. That to oppose the cry now raised against them, is to oppose, alike—reason, and justice and humanity! The agricultural interest nevertheless, is the belly of the body-politic, and let the mutinous members conduct themselves as they may, they cannot survive when the other perishes. It has been no less judiciously than forcibly observed, that the Parliament of 1829 deserved to be cashiered if it had committed no other erime than that simply of refusing to muster forty of its Members to entertain the frequently evaded, or defeated, enquiry into the distressed condition of the agriculturists of the empire. And now that the investigation has actually been made, and the marrow of "the result of the Committee's careful observation is, that during the last ten years especially, the tenants have become gradually more and more distressed; their live and dead stocks have